09 Apr 09

21:00 EDT, 02:00 BST

Well we aren't regretting the decision from yesterday. This morning we packed away the remainder of our stuff and left Le Sous-bois for good...good riddance to that bloody caravan!! After the hostel staff booked us a taxi that never arrived we hailed a cab and made our way to the Le Station Centrale d'Autobus and had some breakfast whilst waiting for our Greyhound to leave.

Having heard many things about Greyhound buses (none of them particularly complimentary) we were pleasantly surprised to find that there was about the same amount of legroom as a train or economy plane, so not too bad. Our personal passage through customs was uneventful, but there were several passengers who were questioned a bit more closely which held up the process.

We then made quite quick progress to Burlington, VT. The change in the landscape was almost instantaneous, from the flat as a pancake fields of Canada to the mountainous and rocky scenery of Vermont. There is still snow and ice around and everything is still bare and brown but still stunning.

Burlington is home to The University of Vermont, and we drove right through the heart of the campus which seemed massive, with lots of new or in progress buildings, we also saw some of the infamous fraternity houses. Because of the fact it is a University town and also spring break it was unsurprising that there were a large number of students waiting for the coach which very rapidly became full. After about an hour we were ready to go again to the next stop on Montpelier which M slept through but according to S it looked like a gold rush town. The next stop was White Spring Junction were we had the opportunity for a bit of a leg stretch before the final push through the remainder of VT, New Hampshire and finally Massachusetts.

When we got to the bus station in Boston we decided to hop in a taxi as our hostel is actually a bit out of town and we were not confident about which metro stop it was. The taxi did get stuck in traffic but only cost $20 so not a bad decision. It turns out that our hostel is two converted town houses and we have a fairly spacious room on the third floor. The area is dominated by students (Harvard across the river and U of Boston 5 mins away) so we decided to eat locally and get a fairly early night. We chose a popular TGI Friday's type restaurant and went for two sharing plates whilst watching a very violent game of ice hockey (Boston Bruins V Montreal Canadians, a clash of our holiday titans and also local rivals). We also passed the metro so now know exactly where to go tomorrow in order to pack as much of Boston into the first of our two days here.

p.s. Mez has also found that the bedside lamp is touch activated and wanted me to put this into the blog!